Worshippers of Cthulhu

by Aethyna Dec 15, 2024 | 1 Votes | 74 Played | 0 Reviews

8 rate

Genres:

Simulation

Graphics:

Labels:

City Building , Ships , Horror , Management

Platforms:

Publishers:

Crytivo Worshippers of Cthulhu is a Lovecraftian-themed city builder and management game where you have absolute control over a group of cultists. Grow their fanaticism, recruit more to join your cult, cater to their earthly needs, and expand your gods’ influence as you ultimately try to gather and activate what you need to bring the Lovecraftian god, Cthulhu, into the world. Play Now Similar Games

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Summary Gameplay Graphics/ Sound Conclusion

Summary

Worshippers of Cthulhu is a Lovecraftian-themed city builder and management game where you have absolute control over a group of cultists. Grow their fanaticism, recruit more to join your cult, cater to their earthly needs, and expand your gods’ influence as you ultimately try to gather and activate what you need to bring the Lovecraftian god, Cthulhu, into the world (and be very well rewarded in the process). Don’t test Cthulhu’s patience – you don’t want to see it when it’s angry!

Gameplay

Worshippers of Cthulhu is pretty much a traditional city builder in the sense that you’ll need to set up all the facilities you need to keep your cultists happy, ranging from providing enough food to having something to wear, to even giving them some of life’s comforts like steaks and milk instead of the usual clams, and religious artifacts like idols. There are several different resources that gets increasingly more advanced as you progress, moving on from using mere wood planks to sandstone blocks and iron bars.

Of course, at the beginning manpower can be a bit limited since you only get new followers periodically. However, as you progress, you’ll unlock new ways to increase the followers you get, be it through providing tribute at an altar or converting captives to your cause. Followers also come in different ranks, with higher ranks having additional “needs and wants”. Once all needs and wants are fulfilled, you can then “ascend” a follower from a lower rank to a higher one using special fungus that grows around the ascension portal.

One interesting feature in this game is the various specializations your followers have. You see, each follower has a job that they are specialized for. If you manage to match the right job with the right specialization, you’ll get a nice production boost. There’s also a way you could change the specialization of your followers, that is by putting them through Ceremonial Carving, which allows you to literally carve basically anything you want into the back of your follower as long as you follow the size and position as indicated by the Book of Symbols. There’s a lengthy cooldown though so getting new followers with the specializations you need is a better strategy than relying on this ceremony to change the specialization of your existing followers.

In fact, rituals and ceremonies are key to getting certain resources in this game as well. For instance, there are various altars that you can build and then provide tribute, such as carving effigies using specific amounts of resources, to gain precious currencies like Favor, which you’ll need to unlock new buildings and production lines (new tech, basically), and more followers. Getting more followers is also crucial here since the more you have, the more Faith you’ll generate. Note that Faith is something like money in this game and you’ll need it to build everything or to kickstart a ritual. I often find myself just speeding through in-game time just so I can get enough Faith to do something I want.

You can use higher level items to carve your effigies to get more resources out of each tribute and in some cases, you can “add on” a sacrifice or two to restore Cthulhu’s dwindling patience in case you have way too many followers you don’t need. Cthulhu’s patience wanes fairly quickly in this game, especially if you’re busy building your city and have diverged from completing the quests given at the Dreamspire. There are also some events that, when resolved in a certain way, will result in a drop in Cthulhu’s patience. Thankfully, most consequences – but not all - for the options you choose in events are clearly shown, so you generally know what you’re getting into.

Worshippers of Cthulhu aren’t just city builders; they also have some real-time strategy elements. You can, for example, recruit a small but powerful army of Lovecraftian Horrors, which you can then use to conquer new islands and defeat any invaders. However, there’s a catch here – any Horrors you summon will lose its life over time even if it’s just left idle. So, it’s crucial to plan your attacks before you summon your Horrors. In terms of defense, you can also build defense towers to protect your island cities from being destroyed while your army is out and about.

This actually brings me to the conquest part of the game. Since many of the maps involve archipelagoes, you can actually go around and capture new islands as you expand. This is something you need to do since different islands, like your followers, have unique boosts and penalties to produce certain resources. For instance, the new island you’ve just captured may provide a nice 50% boost in the production of clams while the one you had had -25% in clam production. Naturally, it makes sense to move production from your existing island to the new one.

This also meant that you’ll need to spend some time swapping followers of certain specializations between islands just because you’ve moved all production of said resource to another island. Swapping followers between cities is made easy thanks to the Swap Follower feature, which wasn’t present in the game’s demo. However, since there are different ranks of Followers, each with different requirements, it can be trick to swap between followers of higher ranks. You can’t just use an empty house to swap but instead, you must first rank up a random follower, then force them to swap homes.

In addition to that, the game also has Decrees which sounds like a good idea, but the options you’re given is so bad that you’d rather not impose any decree at all. The negatives that come with these decrees often outweighs the positives, even if you’re doing pretty good in terms of resources and city expansion.

Graphics/ Sound

True to its theme, Worshippers of Cthulhu features a generally darker and dreary art style, with a focus on muted colors and a strong emphasis on the various hues of sickly green you’d associate with a grim and sombre atmosphere. However, it’s nice to note that the designers use bright colors well here, too, liberally using the color red, for example, to serve as important indicators on the map.

In terms of sound, the game matches its gloomy visuals with matching atmospheric tracks that just give the player a general sense of foreboding, featuring the occasional ominous chants and the sounds of crow cawing. There is voice acting here, too, ranging from the fully-voiced dialogues of the main characters to the quips that your followers make whenever you pull up an interface where followers are involved.

Conclusion

Worshippers of Cthulhu is designed with a particular niche of players in mind – players who love Lovecraftian horror or horror-themed games in general and players who enjoy playing City Builders. It is rather well-designed. The gameplay is surprisingly addictively fun, and there is just so much to do, even if I had to speed through some in-game time now and then just to get enough Faith to expand my city some more. It is definitely a game worth checking out if you happen to be the player the game is catering to.